Instagram picked up 78 percent more uniques in April — thank you, Facebook

A billion dollars will buy you a lot of things, and, in the case of Instagram, one of those things happens to be exposure to millions.

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In April, Instagram’s website saw a 78 percent uptick in unique visitors in the U.S., making the web property of the photo-sharing phenom the highest gaining site on the Internet for the month, according to analytics firm comScore.

Instagram.com, comScore found, had nearly 14.6 million unique U.S. visitors in April, up from 8.2 million in March. The unique figure and the massive gain are remarkable feats considering that Instagram’s bread and butter is its mobile applications for iPhone and Android.

April was quite the month for the photo-sharing app. On April 3, Instagram released its long-awaited Android application. Just days later, Facebook announced that it was buying the young company for roughly $1 billion in cash and stock (we found out later the exact breakdown is $300 million in cash and 23 million shares). Both events likely contributed to an onslaught of Instagram activity that enhanced the service’s already powerful network effect — users post photos in the app and push them out to other social networks where folks click to view images on the web.

So there you have it: Facebook plus Android equals Instagram as top-gaining web property.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for Instagram. Sure, we suspect the company-within-a-company now has well over 50 million users, but founder Kevin Systrom and crew might not be tickled by the fact that the purchase price, which isn’t official until the deal closes later this year, is yoked to Facebook’s currently underwhelming share price. The Instagram deal, for instance, was valued as high as $1.27 billion when Facebook opened at $42 a share. Now, at $31.91 a share, the deal sits at $1.034 billion, a difference of $236 million.

Photo credit: Ashton Pal/Flickr